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No, He’s Not Hitler—Yet. Trumpism is not Fascism—Yet. And while 63 MILLION AMERICANS voted for this guy, that is only 27 Percent of the voting-eligible population. There is plenty of resistance out there to make sure he doesn’t become Hitler and we don’t succumb to neo-fascism. Let’s get to work.

In a live interview with TODAY's Savannah Guthrie, Christopher Wylie, a former employee of British-based company Cambridge Analytica, says the company misused personal Facebook data of some 50 million people to help influence the 2016 presidential election. Wylie says the company met with former Trump campaign manager (and current outside adviser) Corey […]

Marine life is battling an unexpected enemy, lost fishing gear, also known as ghost gear. 705,000 tons of fishing gear are lost in the ocean every year. Mike Neill and his crew are trying to change that.

Do states have a moral right to exclude people from their territory? It might seem obvious that states do have such a right, but Sarah Fine questions this in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can su […]

How do I know I'm not dreaming? This sort of question has puzzled philosophers for thousands of years. Eric Schwitzgebel discusses scepticism and its history with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at D […]

What is a robustly demanding good, and what has that got to do with friendship and love? Find out in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast in which Nigel Warburton interviews Princeton Professor Philip Pettit about this topic.

Philosophers talk about 'knowing how' and 'knowing what'. But what is involved in knowing a person? Katalin Farkas discusses this question with David Edmonds in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University.

Are human beings fundamentally different from the rest of the animal world? Can what we essentially are be captured in a biological or evolutionary description? Roger Scruton discusses the nature of human nature with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

The Hard Problem of consciousness is the difficulty of reconciling experience with materialism. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast, in conversation with Nigel Warburton, Anil Seth, a neuroscientist, explains his alternative approach to consciousness,which he labels the 'Real Problem. Anil is a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow.

Why does apparently trivial ritual play such an important part in some ancient Chinese philosophy? Michael Puett, co-author of The Path, explains in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can subscribe to […]

What is Art? That's not an easy question to answer. Some philosophers even think it can't be answered. Aaron Meskin discusses this question on this episode of Aesthetics Bites. Aesthetics Bites is a podcast series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum and Philosophy Bites […]

The process of dying can be horrible for many, but is there anything bad about death itself? The obvious answer is that deprives us of something that we might otherwise have experienced. But that leads to further philosophical issues...Shelly Kagan discusses some of these with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

We certainly disagree about aesthetic judgments in a range of cases. But is anyone right? Is there no disputing about taste? Are all tastes equal? Elisabeth Schellekens Damman discusses disagreement about taste in this episode of Aesthetics Bites. Aesthetics Bites is a podcast series of interviews with top thinkers in the philosophy of art. It is a collabo […]

Cobalt used to be a byproduct of copper mining, used in everyday, boring stuff like tires and magnets. Now it's one of the most important and sought after metals on the periodic table. This has implications for big tech firms like Apple.

Obama The Dog-Eater

In order to deflect criticism over Mittens putting his dog Seamus on the top of his Chevy wagon during a family vacation, the right-wing has had some real fun over a passage in Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father.

Just last week the right-wing freak Bill Cunningham constructed a question for Mittens that feigned disgust over Mittens’ dog controversy but managed to get in a swipe at Obama:

Now it’s come out that Barack Hussein Obama, who was then Barry Soetoro, ate dogs. When he was in Indonesia, literally, he ate dogs. And I’m thinkin’ to myself that is this the level of the campaign we’re gonna have? … It hasn’t broken yet big time nationally about the President, when he was known as Barry Soetoro, eating dogs in Indonesia…

Get it? The President ate dogs! Wow!

As far as I can tell, the Obama-ate-dog story was pushed anew last week by The Daily Caller, a website founded by right-winger Tucker Carlson. The author of that piece cited the passage from Obama’s book and then confessed to his motivation:

Hey, whatever you have to tell yourself, libs. Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth. And whenever you bring up the one, we’re going to bring up the other.

It’s no fun when we push back, is it? That’s why it’s so much fun.

Fun, fun, fun!

No doubt, if you have been paying attention to the right-wing hateosphere, you have heard all of the sarcastic comments and the attempt to portray Obama as a creepy dog-eater. Such a portrayal, it is hoped, will counter the concerns of dog-lovers, who find Romney’s ill-treatment of Seamus shameful and, more important, revealing.

But of course the story of Mittens and Seamus happened when Mittens was a grown man. And the story of Obama eating dog meat happened when Obama was young—really young. And we only know about it because in Dreams from My Father—first published in 1995!—Obama was describing his life in Indonesia with his stepfather. Here is the passage quoted by The Daily Caller:

With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.

For most Americans, that passage, standing on its own, doesn’t sound too appealing. But I am going to set it in its entire context, hoping against hope that a few Ugly-American Americans out there will appreciate Mr. Obama’s background and life experience and how valuable they might be as president of the world’s only superpower.

The passage came early in his book in a chapter titled, “Origins.” In that chapter he introduced Lolo Soetoro, whom his mother had met at the University of Hawaii. He described how his mother sat him down and told him “that Lolo had proposed and wanted us to move with him to a faraway place.” That place, of course, was Indonesia. Just after arriving there, the young Barry was introduced to the culture via a man killing a chicken in front of him. “The boy should know where his dinner is coming from,” Obama quoted his stepfather.

At some point, Barry got into a fight with an older boy down the road, who got the best of him, and the next day Lolo decided to teach Barry how to fight: “The first thing to remember is how to protect yourself,” Lolo said. It is here where I will begin the section that includes the passage about eating dog meat:

I raised my arms, throwing soft jabs at Lolo’s palm, glancing up at him every so often and realizing how familiar his face had become after our years together, as familiar as the earth on which we stood. It had taken me less than six months to learn Indonesia’s language, its customs, and its legends. I had survived chicken pox, measles, and the sting of my teachers’ bamboo switches. The children of farmers, servants, and low-level bureaucrats had become my best friends, and together we ran the streets morning and night, hustling odd jobs, catching crickets, battling swift kites with razor-sharp lines—the loser watched his kite soar off with the wind, and knew that somewhere other children had formed a long wobbly train, their heads toward the sky, waiting for their prize to land. With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.

That’s how things were, one long adventure, the bounty of a young boy’s life. In letters to my grandparents, I would faithfully record many of these events, confident that more civilizing packages of chocolate and peanut butter would surely follow. But not everything made its way into my letters; some things I found too difficult to explain. I didn’t tell Toot and Gramps about the face of the man who had come to our door one day with a gaping hole where his nose should have been: the whistling sound he made as he asked my mother for food. Nor did I mention the time that one of my friends told me in the middle of recess that his baby brother had died the night before of an evil spirit brought in by the wind—the terror that danced in my friend’s eyes for the briefest of moments before he let out a strange laugh and punched my arm and broke off into a breathless run. There was the empty look on the faces of farmers the year the rains never came, the stoop in their shoulders as they wandered barefoot through their barren, cracked fields, bending over every so often to crumble earth between their fingers; and their desperation the following year when the rains lasted for over a month, swelling the river and fields until the streets gushed with water and swept as high as my waist and families scrambled to rescue their goats and their hens even as chunks of their huts washed away.

The world was violent, I was learning, unpredictable and often cruel…

I realize that setting the passage about dog meat in its context sort of takes the “fun” out of it, but people should understand that we have a president who knows in his bones something much deeper about the world than Mitt Romney will ever know.

3 Comments

Having read this I sought what might be some similar precis of Romney’s background. What I found was a summary of the book, “The Real Romney”. It would appear that he has in fact lived his life in a protective bubble, with the single exception of the 2 1/2 years he spent in France as a Mormon missionary. About that, the authors say:

Mitt Romney grew up in Michigan and then moved to Palo Alto, Calif., to attend Stanford University. After his freshman year, he left for 2 1/2 years to go on a mission to France, which he says greatly strengthened his own faith. “He knocked on doors. He describes feeling ‘lower than a Fuller Brush salesman,’ ” says Kranish. “He would say, ‘Imagine if you go to Bordeaux and you tell people, “I’ve got a great new religion for you, and by the way, give up your wine.” ‘ So he says he learned a lot about rejection and a lot about his faith.”

I suppose that would have exposed him to some life with the 99%, but only in an adversarial way I submit. When you’re knocking on doors with the sole view of convincing people that you come bearing wisdom to correct their wayward ways and ideas, it strikes me as a preachy one-way street. I’m left then to agree with your post and your conclusions, Duane.